naturemorte wrote:like, it's completely valid within the terms of "twin peaks" to suggest that the show is ultimately a grand allegory for the failure of our myths of redemption to compensate for the violence upon which those myths are founded. which, i think, makes it totally legitimate to say, "i have a problem with TP:TR because I recognize that it is unable to validate itself against the charges it itself makes against its own reasons for existing."

this is solid, i'm usually too hung up on authorial intent and taking the story on its own terms, vs clouding the argument and a sort of basic misunderstanding of exploitation and some judgements towards the motivation of the camera's gaze but i'm not someone who can be very coherent about it

((Stuffed is loved by old and young because this is where the puddings get sent in. Criss-cross paving and those tinkly hanging bells make ((Stuffed a very homely access to Hades. Full marks.

naturemorte wrote:the violence against women (and general mother/whore, bitch/victim dynamics) in season 3 made it really, really hard to take for mepeople want to celebrate this thing because it's a massive, singular, visionary work at a time when things like that just don't happen, but we're all postponing a reckoning that's going to have to happen at some point. i generally feel that the reason we want to be done with that take is because no one's made the argument effectively yet, not that the premise itself is flawed.but then again people have been voting vertigo to #1 on the movie lists, which is also unacceptable for the same reasons, so maybe that reckoning is a long ways off still

i'm not sold on the idea that twin peaks uses violence against women in an exploitative way but i do agree that part of my skepticism is that i've never seen that argument made in a compelling way. it's usually just a list of "here's a bunch of times where there was violence against women" with no examination of context.

also disagree that this isn't worth examining- it's a major theme of lynch's work and as such is fair game.

Didn’t mean it wasn’t worth talking about, just that we’ve addressed this issue at least a few times before in this thread yet it keeps being brought up like some gotcha

i finally finished the extras. enjoyed all of them but i could have used less herzog in the jason s ones and overall enjoyed beymer's more, but i guess that's to be expected given all the red room stuff in beymer's. machlachlan deserves a golden globe just for doing his own stunts on that shifting floor/dive scene, jesus. got fanboy chills when sheryl lee asked lynch what she sees when she looks up in the red room before getting pulled up and away while screaming, and he says something like "you see something there, and you see that it's true."

my dad got a 4K/Ultra HD OLED or whatever in the last few weeks and he has 5.1 so i'm gonna prob. gonna take the blu ray over there and watch 1 through 5 and 8 and maybe the last two or something, then fill in the rest on my own

I think I may just skip to episode 8 and then rewatch the first couple of seasons before doing 3.

i accidentally did this and i think its the way to go.

a friend was visiting and the last episode they had seen was 7, so we watched 8 together and it still blew me away so i went back and watched s1/most of s2. its weird watching the original seasons now. they feel off.

mostly because i've seen all the original series a dozen times, i don't need or want to bridge the gap at any point everything about the return goes out of its way to make that gap so glaring and to address it head on

i need to keep this in mind with my hopes for another season. i really do not fire up a return ep after how's annie, and as desperate i always will be for more, i don't want "what year is this?" and laura's scream and those credits to feel like it ever gets a smooth or immediate follow-up.

((Stuffed is loved by old and young because this is where the puddings get sent in. Criss-cross paving and those tinkly hanging bells make ((Stuffed a very homely access to Hades. Full marks.

forest design wrote:Didn’t mean it wasn’t worth talking about, just that we’ve addressed this issue at least a few times before in this thread yet it keeps being brought up like some gotcha

I'm not sure if it's a "gotcha" but in a thread loaded with people who have hard time hearing criticism of Lynch, it's sometimes the only way to get the discussion started. Whether it's a long drawn out response about the misogyny and sexual violence in Lynch's entire oeuvre or a one sentence response calling him out for his apparently misogynist narratives and images, the response will always be "can we not" or "not again."

As a director whose filmography is so closely tied to his persona, it's hard not to think about the inherent reasons behind why he employs so many sexually violent images and narratives towards women. While I would love to believe that he is simply interested in examining trauma and sexual based trauma -- we also have to look at his personal history: He supported Reagan, he is ~30 years older than his current wife, and he wanted to exonerate Roman Polanski. He rose to popularity in a Hollywood that was rampant with misogyny. I think you'd need a lot of cognitive dissonance or be very naive to think he was immune to misogynist ideals. Furthermore, to say that he is completely pure in his intentions with violence towards women in his films, or at least wants to question it and subvert it, seems to be rather farfetched. I straight up think think Lynch has some real problematic views towards women: "purity and impurity" being a major issue and archaic view of women that is hugely prevalent in all of his work (except maybe Inland Empire.) I think for the most part he hides a lot of his problematic views of women behind a surrealism where we can forgive the images we encounter in his work. Sure, a woman is killed in her lingerie -- but it's all fair game in this "Lynchian world" he created. I also think he's fully aware of this and, thinks he can get past a lot of the criticism by calling attention to it (at least in The Return.) As long as things remain "Lynchian," there isn't an issue.

And he might be supremely interested in exploring sexual trauma towards women-- but why? Why is Lynch the one who should explore and portray the subtle nuances of this intensely female issue? Why is a Polanski sympathizer the one to do it? Well he's done it and he's based much of his career off of it.

I think we all, myself included, want to tell ourselves that Lynch is incredibly attuned to the violent images towards women in his work, as well as the gender roles in his films -- because his work is so goddamn interesting outside of it. Because he creates something truly formally unique with the medium. But I don't think, or have ever thought, that Lynch makes work that is a broken and warped window into the world that we live in. I think Lynch makes work that is a broken and warped window into Lynch.

all i can say is that despite the fact that we basically fell in love over our shared lynch obsession, my wife could barely deal with s3. it's not a "gotcha" for her, because she wanted very much to love it and felt alienated by its representation of women.

i see a great many female critics celebrating s3, so i wouldn't take mme morte's experience as definitive, but i think part of the reason why we're not hearing better criticisms on this issue is that, as with so much in lynch, its visceral and intuitive. if you're upset by the violence to the degree that you can't engage with the work, it doesn't seem like something worth writing thousands of words about just to make the point that it's oppressive, especially when there are so many fanboys and girls eager to shut down criticisms of lynch's depiction of women. by the same token, if you're as deeply engaged by it as many here are, there are more interesting things to discuss than the question of whether lynch is a misogynist, and writing something that defends it along those lines would neither do the writer or the show many favors—something i could see being especially uninteresting to female critics for whom there is a lot more to think about in s3 than whether lynch has fucked-up views of women (he does).

anyway, the fact that it gets construed as a "gotcha" (rather than a fundamental question the show is asking about itself and its medium) shows that passions are still so high about it that there maybe isn't room yet for more ambivalent attitudes

chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro

i don't even think you have to be ambivalent to recognize that an artist that most everyone in this thread enjoys and finds profound in a lot of ways, has his own blind spots, some of which end up being uncomfortably central to many of his narratives!

i don't mean to nitpick your language nm, because i think we're mostly in agreement here, but i think the issue is more a refusal among some to even consider that a salient critique does not invalidate the work as a whole

"Blue Velvet" contains scenes of such raw emotional energy that it's easy to understand why some critics have hailed it as a masterpiece. A film this painful and wounding has to be given special consideration.

And yet those very scenes of stark sexual despair are the tipoff to what's wrong with the movie. They're so strong that they deserve to be in a movie that is sincere, honest and true. But "Blue Velvet" surrounds them with a story that's marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots. The director is either denying the strength of his material or trying to defuse it by pretending it's all part of a campy in-joke.

The movie has two levels of reality. On one level, we're in Lumberton, a simple-minded small town where people talk in television cliches and seem to be clones of 1950s sitcom characters. On another level, we're told a story of sexual bondage, of how Isabella Rossellini's husband and son have been kidnapped by Dennis Hopper, who makes her his sexual slave. The twist is that the kidnapping taps into the woman's deepest feelings: She finds that she is a masochist who responds with great sexual passion to this situation.

Everyday town life is depicted with a deadpan irony; characters use lines with corny double meanings and solemnly recite platitudes.

Meanwhile, the darker story of sexual bondage is told absolutely on the level in cold-blooded realism.

The movie begins with a much praised sequence in which picket fences and flower beds establish a small-town idyll. Then a man collapses while watering the lawn, and a dog comes to drink from the hose that is still held in his unconscious grip. The great imagery continues as the camera burrows into the green lawn and finds hungry insects beneath - a metaphor for the surface and buried lives of the town.

The man's son, a college student (Kyle MacLachlan), comes home to visit his dad's bedside and resumes a romance with the daughter (Laura Dern) of the local police detective. MacLachlan finds a severed human ear in a field, and he and Dern get involved in trying to solve the mystery of the ear. The trail leads to a nightclub singer (Rossellini) who lives alone in a starkly furnished flat.

In a sequence that Hitchcock would have been proud of, MacLachlan hides himself in Rossellini's closet and watches, shocked, as she has a sadomashochistic sexual encounter with Hopper, a drug-sniffing pervert.

Hopper leaves. Rossellini discovers MacLachlan in the closet and, to his astonishment, pulls a knife on him and forces him to submit to her seduction. He is appalled but fascinated; she wants him to be a "bad boy" and hit her.

These sequences have great power. They make "9 1/2 Weeks" look rather timid by comparison, because they do seem genuinely born from the darkest and most despairing side of human nature. If "Blue Velvet" had continued to develop its story in a straight line, if it had followed more deeply into the implications of the first shocking encounter between Rossellini and MacLachlan, it might have made some real emotional discoveries.

Instead, director David Lynch chose to interrupt the almost hypnotic pull of that relationship in order to pull back to his jokey, small-town satire. Is he afraid that movie audiences might not be ready for stark S & M unless they're assured it's all really a joke? I was absorbed and convinced by the relationship between Rossellini and MacLachlan, and annoyed because the director kept placing himself between me and the material. After five or 10 minutes in which the screen reality was overwhelming, I didn't need the director prancing on with a top hat and cane, whistling that it was all in fun.

Indeed, the movie is pulled so violently in opposite directions that it pulls itself apart. If the sexual scenes are real, then why do we need the sendup of the "Donna Reed Show"? What are we being told? That beneath the surface of Small Town, U.S.A., passions run dark and dangerous? Don't stop the presses.

The sexual material in "Blue Velvet" is so disturbing, and the performance by Rosellini is so convincing and courageous, that it demands a movie that deserves it. American movies have been using satire for years to take the edge off sex and violence. Occasionally, perhaps sex and violence should be treated with the seriousness they deserve. Given the power of the darker scenes in this movie, we're all the more frustrated that the director is unwilling to follow through to the consequences of his insights.

"Blue Velvet" is like the guy who drives you nuts by hinting at horrifying news and then saying, "Never mind." There's another thing. Rossellini is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve. In one scene, she's publicly embarrassed by being dumped naked on the lawn of the police detective. In others, she is asked to portray emotions that I imagine most actresses would rather not touch. She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.

That's what Bernardo Bertolucci delivered when he put Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider through the ordeal of "Last Tango in Paris." In "Blue Velvet," Rossellini goes the whole distance, but Lynch distances himself from her ordeal with his clever asides and witty little in-jokes. In a way, his behavior is more sadistic than the Hopper character.

surly wrote:i don't mean to nitpick your language nm, because i think we're mostly in agreement here, but i think the issue is more a refusal among some to even consider that a salient critique does not invalidate the work as a whole

yeah i don't think we disagree. i think in the case of twin peaks it's tough because for so many it was, like, the only piece of visionary culture in 2017 (and maybe longer) and yet it was also deeply inflected by the very things that made culture this year so depressing and repulsive. i have no doubt that in time twin peaks season 3 is going to be very widely discussed within the context of the weinstein phenomenon, and in fact is probably the most compelling text many aspects of our historical moment throughbut again, there is a very very strong instinct among fans of twin peaks to insulate it from the world, whether that be by preserving the integrity of its mythology, or rejecting a call to read the text in light of the historical moment

chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro

surly wrote:i don't mean to nitpick your language nm, because i think we're mostly in agreement here, but i think the issue is more a refusal among some to even consider that a salient critique does not invalidate the work as a whole

yeah i don't think we disagree. i think in the case of twin peaks it's tough because for so many it was, like, the only piece of visionary culture in 2017 (and maybe longer) and yet it was also deeply inflected by the very things that made culture this year so depressing and repulsive.

Bartatua wrote:naturemorte what do you think about ebert's 1 star review of blue velvet

so this is an interesting case and i could probably dissect this review sentence by sentence, because it says a lot more about ebert and the critical lens that he's bringing to the film than it does about the film itself. and the end where he says that "last tango in paris" was worth all the abuse it put maria schneider through, but blue velvet isn't--woof. it deprives rossellini of agency in assuming that she was personally degraded by performing as dorothy, which is already a projection of a certain kind of puritanism that ebert himself faults the film for not subverting enough! and then it suggests that there is some kind of objective level of quality that a film can achieve which will validate the suffering of an actress, which implicitly posits that the true arbiter of such quality is ebert himself. not coolbut on the other hand, his objection comes from a recognition of the power of the film, but an incomplete one. he finds the darker sides of the film impactful, but isn't able to view the small-town optimist side of the film as genuine. or rather, he reads the film as contrasting the "real" depraved underbelly with the "fake" donna reed anytown USA stuff, which is a fundamental misreading of the film: the point is that both are performative, and that underlying those exaggerated performances of normality and deviancy are genuine desires or drives that can only be expressed through a kind of ultra-theatrical performance. for the film to work emotionally, you have to identify with both--again, the fact that ebert can't says more about him than about the film

chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro

more to the point thought--his objection isn't against the representation of the suffering of women per se, it's that it's not put in the service of a meaningful representation of american society. which, in assuming that the role of women's suffering in film is to advance a representation of something beyond it, is much less insightful than lynch's work itself, which consistently asks the question of what the currency of women's suffering is to the society itself—how economies are organized around it, how our understanding of leisure and entertainment are organized around it, etc.

the problem in lynch as i see it has more to do with complicity in that system, and maybe even more with whether the control you have as a director allows you to abstract violence or abuse (whether real or psychological, enacted or imagined) into self-reflexive artifice in a way which insulates you from criticism, in the way that woody allen does or that louis c.k. tried to do with "i love you daddy." i mean that is a fundamental aspect of filmmaking or art to some degree—i can't stand here and criticize it in lynch or allen and then celebrate it in pialat or garrel—but one of the things 2017 has really illuminated for me is how the idea of art as a way of "sublimating" our darker impulses or fantasies overlooks the degree to which it can not only be a smokescreen for abuse, but maybe itself instantiates a different, less direct kind of violence--which gets back to my questions about how lynch's representations of power and violence have themselves become more and more diffuse and indirect

chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro

naturemorte, you mentioned historical context on the previous page, and have talked about insularity of Lynch's work. Do you think artists--not just Lynch, but any filmmaker, writer, etc.--should consider the world at large, at least this moment in time? I'm reminded of Richard Brody's writing on The Lobster (see here), in which Brody, right at the start, chastises Lanthimos for making the film he made and not something about the state of his native Greece. Whatever merits the film may have (I was fond of it, for the record), I don't at all agree with Brody's stance on that he should have made a completely different work. You're not doing the same thing with Lynch, but I wonder if what you're thinking is that Lynch should have thought more about how *that particular aspect* of his work would be received now, and whether he should have considered making a change for that reason.

As for the treatment of violence in this series, I believe I've said this earlier in the thread, but I'll restate it here. It was disturbing, and yes, it was especially disturbing at times because just who was the victim. (The motel scene being at the top of this.) But I didn't think it was exploitative or gratuitous, nor do I fault any one for thinking it was too much and that it was enough for them to stop watching.

naturemorte wrote:the problem in lynch as i see it has more to do with complicity in that system, and maybe even more with whether the control you have as a director allows you to abstract violence or abuse (whether real or psychological, enacted or imagined) into self-reflexive artifice in a way which insulates you from criticism, in the way that woody allen does or that louis c.k. tried to do with "i love you daddy." i mean that is a fundamental aspect of filmmaking or art to some degree—i can't stand here and criticize it in lynch or allen and then celebrate it in pialat or garrel—but one of the things 2017 has really illuminated for me is how the idea of art as a way of "sublimating" our darker impulses or fantasies overlooks the degree to which it can not only be a smokescreen for abuse, but maybe itself instantiates a different, less direct kind of violence--which gets back to my questions about how lynch's representations of power and violence have themselves become more and more diffuse and indirect

Eyeball Kid wrote:naturemorte, you mentioned historical context on the previous page, and have talked about insularity of Lynch's work. Do you think artists--not just Lynch, but any filmmaker, writer, etc.--should consider the world at large, at least this moment in time? I'm reminded of Richard Brody's writing on The Lobster (see here), in which Brody, right at the start, chastises Lanthimos for making the film he made and not something about the state of his native Greece. Whatever merits the film may have (I was fond of it, for the record), I don't at all agree with Brody's stance on that he should have made a completely different work. You're not doing the same thing with Lynch, but I wonder if what you're thinking is that Lynch should have thought more about how *that particular aspect* of his work would be received now, and whether he should have considered making a change for that reason.

As for the treatment of violence in this series, I believe I've said this earlier in the thread, but I'll restate it here. It was disturbing, and yes, it was especially disturbing at times because just who was the victim. (The motel scene being at the top of this.) But I didn't think it was exploitative or gratuitous, nor do I fault any one for thinking it was too much and that it was enough for them to stop watching.

i really like richard brody, in part because the impulses that take him past the goalposts of what we might call critical fairness or judiciousness are impulses that i share. there's nothing really in lanthimos's film specifically that bears comparing with gomes, as far as i can tell, other than brody likes gomes and wants more films like those, and dislikes lanthimos and finds tons of reasons to do so by way of comparison to the things he likes. but to me, being an interesting critic—as opposed to a scholar— means bringing a set of values to bear on a film more than it means understanding the work from the inside out. i think there are a great many competent critics today who are very good at establishing whether films are good on their own merits and a tragic paucity of those who i can reliably go to for anything like a worthwhile ideological or historical critique of anything in movie theaters. that being said, i still think he's wrong about the lobster, for a couple reasons, but one sticks out at me because brody himself makes the observation: the lobster "gives the sense of being shot nowhere and being about nowhere."

what i liked about "the lobster" and "dogtooth" are kind of what i like about structural films, they seem to reference nothing outside themselves and put the spectator in the role of understanding the strange logic and rules that make the film work. in the dissertation i'm writing now, though, i try to show that while structural films have no political "content," the very tools that they use, like the zoom lens, are inherently politicized because they are expressions of historical and cultural imperatives. i would say the same thing is potentially true about any film—it's impossible to extract it entirely from politics or history (again, brody gets to that in the end). whereas brody would see that as an drawback, i would say that it's a benefit in lanthimos's work, maybe, although to get at how would take some time.

in the case of lynch, TP is totally honest to his artistic intentions and sensibility, which is all we should really ask of any filmmaker. and by virtue of that, and of the course of world events, it's very relevant to a number of questions we're asking about the gendered representation of violence. by that logic, i wouldn't change it at all, just as i wouldn't ask an artist to do anything other than what they think is artistically just. the question is whether we as an audience accept or reject the work on those terms. brody is wrong to ask lanthimos to make a different film, but i think he's right to reject it according to the set of political values he brings to the theater with him. as i said, i happen to share a lot of those sentiments, and so personally i do judge things according to whether they are intentionally engaged with or consequent to political questions , if only because it's such a critical time and i don't really believe that art can escape those questions anyway. hope that makes sense--gotta go pick up mme morte from the airport

chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro

naturemorte wrote:all i can say is that despite the fact that we basically fell in love over our shared lynch obsession, my wife could barely deal with s3. it's not a "gotcha" for her, because she wanted very much to love it and felt alienated by its representation of women.

i see a great many female critics celebrating s3, so i wouldn't take mme morte's experience as definitive, but i think part of the reason why we're not hearing better criticisms on this issue is that, as with so much in lynch, its visceral and intuitive. if you're upset by the violence to the degree that you can't engage with the work, it doesn't seem like something worth writing thousands of words about just to make the point that it's oppressive, especially when there are so many fanboys and girls eager to shut down criticisms of lynch's depiction of women. by the same token, if you're as deeply engaged by it as many here are, there are more interesting things to discuss than the question of whether lynch is a misogynist, and writing something that defends it along those lines would neither do the writer or the show many favors—something i could see being especially uninteresting to female critics for whom there is a lot more to think about in s3 than whether lynch has fucked-up views of women (he does).

anyway, the fact that it gets construed as a "gotcha" (rather than a fundamental question the show is asking about itself and its medium) shows that passions are still so high about it that there maybe isn't room yet for more ambivalent attitudes

See the way in which this still has elements of a gotcha is that the assumption is that Lynch definitely has fucked up views toward women, his depictions of them is misogynistic (evidence: ad hominem about where he grew up and where and who he married and anecdotes about a girlfriend or two dipping out early), but it’s cool, heh, cant help lovin em despite it.

I’m not convinced that is right. I think there’s an argument to be made (and it has been made, notably by some female Lynhian academics/critics) that Lynch’s depiction of women is nuanced and profound.

Hope this doesn’t come off as combative, I do think the issue is one word raising and discussing. I don’t have the wherewithal right now to write up an essay to counter some of the arguments you’ve put forth thus far, but I don’t think the issue is as clear as it’s assumed to be. Nor do I think the concession that you’ve put forth exactly covers the worth of his perspective and portrayals, though it is an interesting meta-take on his intentions.